On DVD: Interview With The Vampire

I actually sat down to watch this quite a while back in preparation for the play LESTAT, but only got a couple free moments to write up the review. Obviously this isn't even remotely close to being a recent film. The movie is from 1994 based on a book, I believe, was written in the late 1970's. I read the book a couple years ago, so I'll review the movie from several perspectives.

I watched the extended cut with extras and interviews. In one of the interviews someone stated that Interview with the Vampire is a story of the saddest vampires in the world, and indeed, that is correct. You have a bunch of pretty people who do nothing but brood all through their twilit waking hours. The rest of the story is about how they choose to interact with each other and dealing with the hardships of being immortal and having to be evil creatures who prey on human life. That's really the story in a nutshell.

From the perspective of a watcher of films, it was pretty good. The special effects were good. The acting was fine. The cast did a good job. It was pretty entertaining and didn't wear thin.

As someone who read the books, there were some problems. Tom Cruise is way too short. Lestat de Lioncourt is supposed to be about six feet tall. Otherwise most of his other attributes were fine. The six vampiric fangs were artistic interpretation in the movie, as Anne Rice clearly made the point of mentioning over and over again that Lestat had two small but sharp fangs, and they would be noticeable when he chose them to be. Brad Pitt's hair wasn't dark and wavy enough to be accurate, but that's certainly nothing worth complaining about. What I didn't care for was the palor of the vampiric skin and the way the veins were so visible below. Vampire skin, as described by Rice, becomes more and more white with time, and somewhat lustrous. These just reminded me of the underdwellers from Planet of the Apes who haven't seen the sun in so long. Antonio Banderas did a good job, but Armand is supposed to be a boy made vampire at the age of about 17 or so. There is no way Banderas fits that bill.

I saw Queen of the Damned before this one. Many people didn't realize that it was the sequel for Interview. Indeed it was, and what a piece of crap follow up it was. This was another time that the original far exceeded the next installment. If you must watch an Anne Rice book on the screen, opt for Interview.

You might ask, why did it take me so long to watch this movie, considering that I've been reading these novels for years now. My "No Brad Pitt Rule" and my "No Tom Cruise Rule" are the reason. I have a laundry list of actors whom I despised and preferred to NEVER support their work. Pitt and Cruise were at the top of that list with Bruce Willis and many other distinguished actors. But recently I've rescinded that edict and started watching their work. I think the first Pitt film I paid for was Mr & Mrs Smith, but I think the Angelina Jolie factor might've assisted there. Also a friend highly recommended Legends of the Fall, which was beautiful in how perfectly sad it was. That was a good choice.

But I digress. There are many other reasons to check out Interview. If you only saw it on broadcast television, you MUST rent it. Keep in mind that vampires are violent killing machines and on TV that point can NEVER be relayed properly. Christian Slater as the interviewer breathed so much more interest and life into that character. He really steals the scenes from Brad. Some people might want to see a twelve year old Kirsten Dunst doing an amazing job as Claudia. Claudia remains a theme in a lot of Rice's work. She just makes the work that much more compelling. Without a good Claudia, this tale wouldn't be worth watching. It's even so in the play LESTAT -- Claudia is really the only reason to watch it.

So, after all that, I must say that Interview was the best live action incarnation derived from the Vampire Chronicles to date. I would recommend it as the best of the batch.

More on IMDB:
http://imdb.com/title/tt0110148/